The County Set – A Short Immortal Dynasty

[hazelnut]

Getting Started
Comings and Goings
The First Immortal
Learning Recipes
Bereavement and Bliss
Coming Up Roses
Emergency Repairs
The Odd Couple
Gen 5 Is the New Gen 6
Graffiti and Guitars
Fishing for Clues
A Charmer - and a Crisis

[hazelnut]

Getting Started

Yes, you read that correctly – my latest mad project is playing the Immortal Dynasty to all of the usual rules but on the short lifespan.

(Note to any mods who may be reading this: I wasn’t sure whether to file this under dynasties or miscellaneous.  Please move it if I picked the wrong one.)

There are some pretty obvious strategies for this:

• Use self-employment or professions for the unique careers, with rabbitholes saved for second careers in case of a shortage of Black Ops.  Or alternatively, bung everyone into the investigator career after they’ve finished their unique one.
• Forget about museum value – it’s going to be tiny whatever happens, so keep it simple and just collect portraits.
• Have an all-female line, because life extensions from pregnancy are pretty significant on this speed.  I’m half-ignoring this one – the immortals that I think will have the trickier tasks will be female but I’m planning for four of each.
• Think carefully about which expansions to use: opportunities have definitely become less frequent on the later patches but simpler games seem to generate more, at least on my computer.  I’m playing this with Ambitions, Late Night, Supernatural, Showtime, University Life and Island Paradise.  In retrospect, that’s probably too many EPs but I’m stuck with them now.  I thought hard about World Adventures but eventually decided to play without it.  I love No Bills Ever and Meditative Trance Sleep but hate the way the WA opportunities keep popping up instead of the base-game ones.  Also, the extra time from travelling would make the short lifespan almost irrelevant after the first generation and I really wanted this to be a challenge.  To partly compensate for the lack of No Bills Ever, I’m playing with the Renault set from the store.
• Above all, play in Monte Vista, the place with the best dynasty slaves in the Simverse.  (Actually, some of the other towns may be equally good but I know and like the Monte Vistan townies.)

Enough blathering; on with the dynasty!



This is Clare.  She’s artistic, because she’s destined to be the main portrait painter for the dynasty.  She’s ambitious, for the extra LTHPs, and excitable, simply because it’s one of my favourite traits.  She’s also friendly and charismatic, because she’s going to need a lot of help to get her family established – she’d better make friends easily.

Clare moved into 27 Verona Way, conveniently located between the fire station and the elixir store, and with a pleasant sea view but not much else.



She left her empty lot immediately in search of helpers.  First stop, the GilsCarbo house.  This Carlotta proved much easier to persuade than the 4x4 version and before the morning was over Clare had a housemate.



They took a taxi up to the walled town together and then Clare went off to join the police temporarily, to fulfil a random wish, and then walked over to City Hall to register as an architect before returning down the hill to make use of the easel and bathroom at the fire station.  Meanwhile, Carlotta read gardening books at the library and then visited Gino Ferrari to swap recipes (with so few expansions, her lifetime wish wasn’t yet complete).



They got along brilliantly.  In fact, I think Carlotta might have been happy to dump Eduardo and take up with Gino instead.  She settled for inviting him over and then asking him to move in.  Gino sold his Ferrari Margaret Vaguester and Clare achieved her lifetime wish.  Not bad for her first day.



Clare’s wish to join the police force turned out to have been a stroke of luck.  Chan Seng, one of the two Monte Vistans who are capable of painting portraits at the start of the game, was allocated as her partner.  Before she forgot where he lived, Gino hurried over, exerted his considerable charm and persuaded Chan to join the household.



I’ve had the multitab from the store for a while but keep forgetting to use it.  This time, all of the helpers got one and life started to settle into a rhythm.  Carlotta, who had become largely nocturnal, fished and listened to gardening tabcasts.



Gino gardened and listened to cooking tabcasts.  Chan painted and listened to logic tabcasts.  Clare just painted.



Not that they could settle for long.  Not on this speed.  Clare still needed a husband.  So Gino visited Jayden James and asked him to join the group.





Jayden fitted right in, taking over the garden from Gino, who needed to concentrate on his career for the next few days, and starting to learn logic and painting – it was becoming obvious that a younger portrait painter would be needed as a back-up and Carlotta was too busy with other things.

All too soon, Chan aged up to elder and retired from the police force.  He was never going to achieve his lifetime wish and he might as well enjoy his last few days.



Clare suddenly noticed how attractive Jayden was.  Can’t imagine what triggered that



They progressed rapidly from first kiss to a marriage proposal…



… and then to first woohoo.



There were chimes.



"Ah!  Nooboo!"



And it was still week 1.

[hazelnut]

Comings and Goings

Week 2 started with Gino achieving his lifetime wish.



He retired as soon as he got home: it was highly unlikely that he’d live long enough to work another shift, so he might as well get paid for spending his remaining time pottering around the garden and filling his shiny new fridge with high-quality food.  Clare was out, taking a brief break from painting to see which townies had turned into supernaturals.  She and Alessandra Giordano got on so well that Clare invited her over, cured her lycanthropy and asked her to join the household.



Or to put it another way, I’d realised that I needed a back-up back-up painter.  Jayden was older than his fiancée to start with and now her age was temporarily frozen.  It wasn’t at all certain that he’d still be around to paint her elder portrait, especially if they had a second child.  On reflection, I should have moved in all three of the GilsCarbos back at the start.  At the time, having a toddler to train in addition to the rest of the start-up chaos seemed like too much to handle but I think now that it would have been doable, especially with the walker and playpen.  Eduardo and Goopy could have both been trained up as portrait painters and Goopy could have been the gen 2 spouse or, more likely, fathered one for gen 3 when the original townies will probably have died out.  (EA, why did you have to get rid of story progression?)  Gino, much as I like him – not to mention his expensive car and easy access to the chef’s fridge – wasn’t really a necessary addition to the household.  I might even have been able to manage without Chan – with Clare’s young adult life stage being extended by her pregnancy, it’s likely that artistic Eduardo would have been able to paint her portrait before she aged up.  Anyway…

On the Monday of week 2, the heir put in her appearance.  And it’s a yellowboo!  Welcome to the madhouse, Kerry.



The new parents had a private wedding in the garden while the baby was asleep.





Awww, their formal outfits look really Christmassy together.

The happiness didn’t last long.  That evening, Grim came for Chan.  He was 27 and his age bar had only just filled up .



RIP, Chan Seng (and thanks for the portrait and the police car).

Since his daughter Kannitha has become a fairy, it’s possible that Chan’s genes will find their way into the family tree at a later stage.  I certainly hope so.

Carlotta had been reading recipe books when she wasn’t fishing or visiting the elixir shop and achieved her lifetime wish by learning how to cook ambrosia, although I failed to get a screenshot.  She’d caught a dozen deathfish, despite her tendency to wander away from the lighthouse if I took my eye off her.  All we needed now was lifefruit.  They had plenty of money trees and enough flame fruit to live off baked angel food cake for the rest of the dynasty but only one of their special seeds so far had grown into a deathflower and lifeplants were notable by their absence.  Now that Gino had enough points for a collection helper, he and Jayden ran around town collecting every special seed that appeared.  Finally, they had lifefruit (and another two deathflowers).  Carlotta bought a replicator with her happiness points and started making ambrosia.



Mission accomplished!  The replicator was stocked and the half-made bowl of ambrosia stored in the attic in case it was needed again.  Carlotta knew it was there – not being able to reach the bowl to finish cooking the ambrosia drove her nuts.  Sorry, ‘Lotta.

Kerry aged up to toddler on her own.  I was too preoccupied with the adults to remember that she could have a cake earlier in the day.



That’s Jayden’s hair colour, I think, along with Clare’s dark brown eyes.  Her features look like a mixture of both parents.



Her favourite colour’s lime green but I’m not sure that’s going to go too well with her skin.

Clare and Carlotta shared the potty training and Kerry taught herself to walk, dodging neatly around the feet of the painting adults.



Then a playpen appeared and she taught herself to talk as well.  On her child birthday, she was ready for a cake as soon as everyone was up.





She spent the rest of the day being tutored by her father.  It seemed like a good point to pause the game and rebuild the house – and when I restarted, Kerry had mysteriously acquired homework .  Not the most fun birthday ever.

The main reason for the rebuild was that Clare had become a minor celebrity.  She’d had an opportunity to deliver a painting and it turned out that the customer was slightly famous.  Some of her fame rubbed off on Clare during the handover.  The first (oddly formal) paparazzi turned up just after the rebuild and were rather miffed to find that they couldn’t get into the house.  One of them was Giuseppe Esposito.  It was nice to see him again.



I was beginning to get worried about Clare’s career progress.  She’d had an entrepreneurial mindset from the beginning and had used a job booster from the elixir store but she wasn’t getting promotions as quickly as I’d expected.  The painting was going oddly as well.  I’d usually expect painters to get the three challenges at about the same time.  In fact, I’ve had several painters who got all three with the same painting, usually close to the point where they maxed the skill.  Clare was turning out to be very different.  She’d produced her first brilliant painting just after she hit level 6 and became a Proficient Painter at level 7 but it was clearly going to take a lot more than 30 paintings to max the skill and there was no prospect of a masterpiece yet.  I was getting bored of seeing the same paintings over and over again, so I bought her a drawing board and she switched over to sketching architecture for a few days.  With the help of a second job booster and perfect basil from the garden, she finally made it to the top of her profession.



Her elder birthday was now very close and she still hadn’t maxed painting or produced a single masterpiece, so she and Jayden tried for another life extension baby.  Despite several attempts, there were no chimes.



Then Clare was summoned to the town hall to be presented with the key to the city.  Just after she’d left the house this happened:





Rest in peace, Jayden James/County.  Thank you for the garden, the tutoring and the portraits.  And for passing on your interesting genes.  Will that impressive musculature be handed on down the family, I wonder?

Blissfully unaware of what was happening at home, Clare continued up the hill to her astonishingly sparsely attended celebration of great success.



(The ‘crowd’ consisted of that woman with the balloon and a single paparazza.)

As the brief ceremony ended and the mayor walked away, the news reached Clare.



Sadly, Grim hadn’t yet finished his work for the day.  Even before Clare returned home, he was back.



Goodbye and thank you yet again, Carlotta GilsCarbo, dynasty slave extraordinaire.  We couldn’t have done it without you.

[CeresIn]

You Are Brave.

Too much to do in little time, I know for sure that I would fail this if I tried (I'm not).

But it makes an interesting story with everything that happens in a single chapter. Good Luck!!

[starlives]

Wow what a challenge you have set yourself!  But then I have no doubt that it will work out for you - you always seem to have your strategies mapped out so well beforehand.
Love Clare's look and totally approve of her spouse choice.  I have played Jayden many times and have his offspring in many of my saved files.  But I have never seen him as an elder before so that was interesting.
Lovely screenshots as always and Monte Vista is one of my most played towns - the lighting is so glorious.
Have this bookmarked and look forward to your updates.
Just out of interest was there a particular reason you called this dynasty "The County Set"?

[hazelnut]

Thanks, both of you .  This is something I've been considering, on and off, for quite a while - in fact, rather longer than I thought.  I just went back and found the conversation I had with ratchie about playing the immortal dynasty on a shorter lifespan and was surprised to find that it was over four years ago  .  I got as far as starting a couple of times but gave up at an early stage.  It occurred to me a week or two back that some of the expansions I've bought since the last try would help a lot (alchemy's really useful, for example) and having played through the 4x4 was great experience.  I actually prefer the medium lifespan to the normal one for most games now.

It's the first time I've played Jayden, although one of my Sims married David and they both seem to become close friends with most of my Monte Vista families.  He's certainly very pleasant to look at .

Wow what a challenge you have set yourself!  But then I have no doubt that it will work out for you - you always seem to have your strategies mapped out so well beforehand.

Well, I thought I'd got it worked out, although I am finding things I could have done better...

Just out of interest was there a particular reason you called this dynasty "The County Set"?

Yes.  They're all going to be named after counties.  I recently found a spreadsheet I put together a while back with naming themes and realised that there were more than enough in the list of counties for an immortal dynasty.  Their surname was going to be Shires initially, until I realised that there are very few shire counties that work as names for people.  Co Clare and Co Kerry are both in Ireland - the plan is to use English, Welsh and Scottish county names as well later on.

[hazelnut]

The First Immortal

Soon after Carlotta’s death, Clare started feeling sick.  Was it just the stress of losing so many friends or had she conceived despite the lack of chimes?

That evening, Kerry aged up again.





She visited the mirror and chest of drawers to sort out her new look (primarily blue this time, with lime accents)…



…and then let herself into the newly unlocked skilling room to begin learning alchemy.



The following morning, Clare’s pregnancy was confirmed.



It was no great surprise by now.  I’ve rarely seen a Sim be sick quite so often.  It’s just as well that painting’s an enjoyable activity, since her watcher wasn’t going to let a little thing like a pregnancy stop her from insisting on as much skilling as possible.  It’s a good thing she wasn’t a writer.



A very pregnant Clare reached level 10 and turned out six masterpieces in a row.  Supermaxed at last!

Clare and Jayden’s second child, Devon, was born in the bedroom corridor…



…just before Gino had his appointment with Grim around the corner.  Gino had proved to be long-lived again – 35 is pretty impressive on this lifespan.

I was rather surprised to be able to choose both of Devon’s birth traits.  What with the morning-, afternoon- and evening-sickness and the double mourning moodlet from losing both her husband and her best friend, I have no idea how Clare stayed so happy.

A day after her son’s birth, the sparkles caught up with Clare.





It was OK (well, apart from the unfortunate hairstyle).  Almost all of her requirements were now in place.  All she needed were another two best friends (and alchemy could take care of them) and her final portrait and she’d be done.

While Clare was tying up the loose ends, Devon had his first birthday.



He looks to be almost the exact opposite of Kerry – he has Jayden’s eyes and Clare’s hair colour.  I’m pretty sure that his skin colour is Clare’s slider position on Jayden’s slider: Kerry is almost certainly the other way around.  Like his big sister, he taught himself to walk and talk.



At 24 days old (or 30, if you count the extra time from pregnancies), Clare’s requirements were complete.


                                            Clare’s portraits: YA by Chan, adult by Jayden and elder by Alessandra

She walked over to the replicator and pressed the button.

I did a quick double-check that she’d fulfilled all of the requirements and went into total panic mode: Adora Almeria had somehow slipped from best friend to good friend when I wasn’t looking.  Fortunately, Clare wasn’t hungry enough to eat the ambrosia autonomously and the rest of the household were busy elsewhere.  One phone call later, everything was in place again.





And Clare went off to the mirror to dye her hair back to a slightly softer version of its youthful shade.



One down; seven to go.


Clare County

Traits: artistic, ambitious, excitable, friendly, charismatic

Lifetime wish: Swimming in Cash
Career: Architect
Skill: Painting

Building: Civic Center
Property: Little Gipper Fishing Park

Unique lifetime rewards: Extra Creative, Fireproof Homestead, Moodlet Manager

Unique best friends

• Alessandra Giordano
• Goopy GilsCarbo
• Joaquin Costa
• Lakisha Costa
• Adora Almeria
• Marta Almeria

Unique opportunities

• Art Class
• A Medium Painting
• Popular Painter
• Networking Is Key
• Celebrity Body
• The Study of Art

Phew!  That was hectic.  It might have taken less than three Sim weeks to play through but it took far longer in real-life time than the first generation of a dynasty on the normal speed  Still, it’s the most fun I’ve had playing Sims in ages .

Of course, I may be totally deranged…

[KRae]

No Generations is a great idea. Graduation is a killer on short lifespan.

[PeregrineTook]

Wow, I can't imagine going for a dynasty on a short lifespan.  I've never gotten past the 5th generation with normal!
What a lovely, little, yellow heiress you've got there!  Can't wait to read more  :=)

[KCNDreams]

Congratulations on your first immortal! Just reading, it seems to zoom by, I can't imagine how it is to play. Only ~30 days in a lifetime must make every day feel jam packed and even more important. It seems like the biggest benefit of the short lifespan is that it won't take nearly as long in real time to complete, have you found any other benefits?


Good luck with the future immortals, I can't wait to see how the genetics play out, and your future strategy

[hazelnut]

No Generations is a great idea. Graduation is a killer on short lifespan.

I remember how much trouble you had with that with the Breves.  That was the main reason I chose not to use it.  Really missing the maternity outfits, the kids' hair and clothes and the motive mobile, though .

Wow, I can't imagine going for a dynasty on a short lifespan.  I've never gotten past the 5th generation with normal!
What a lovely, little, yellow heiress you've got there!  Can't wait to read more  :=)

Generation 6 is my bugbear.  I nearly lost the Woods at that stage and did lose the Rainbows.  Fingers crossed...

Congratulations on your first immortal! Just reading, it seems to zoom by, I can't imagine how it is to play. Only ~30 days in a lifetime must make every day feel jam packed and even more important. It seems like the biggest benefit of the short lifespan is that it won't take nearly as long in real time to complete, have you found any other benefits?

Good luck with the future immortals, I can't wait to see how the genetics play out, and your future strategy

The first generation wasn't actually faster at all in my time.  I'm hoping that will change as I get further through - and that the short lifespan will wipe out the boredom that tends to set in near the end of a normal-speed immortal dynasty.  It was also fun to plan.  I often find that I enjoy planning games as much as playing them; sometimes more.  Working out what careers and supermaxed skills I was reasonably confident of getting through in the time and then combining them was interesting and I'm hoping that the time pressure will mean that the game itself is just as absorbing.  So far, it's working out that way.

[hazelnut]

Learning Recipes

Kerry was not academically inclined, to say the least.  Despite going to school in a good mood every morning and spending the day talking to friends, she was always stressed by the time she got home.  She didn’t seem to be progressing as well as she should have done, either.  Jayden’s tutoring had got her through primary school but I’d thought she’d be OK on her own at high school.  Apparently not.  So Alessandra took a logic class, followed by intensive chess practice while listening to logic tabcasts, and tutored Kerry to an A just in time.  (That really was close – she was about half an hour from aging up.)





Despite her dislike of school, Kerry didn’t seem entirely happy about growing up.  Or maybe it was just the hair and clothes.  After trips to the mirror and dresser, she settled down a bit.



Now she could concentrate on her two great loves, cooking and alchemy. 

The obvious way to manage a cook/alchemist on a limited lifespan would be to do the alchemist career with a cooking supermax and the culinary librarian wish.  On the other hand, I’ve supermaxed cooking with loads of Sims but have only done alchemy once, with Sev in the Household Skills.  I decided to go the all-alchemy route instead.

I still wanted a back-up ambrosia cook as soon as possible, though, in case of bugs.  Under strict supervision, Kerry was allowed a multitab and spent her days researching alchemy while listening to cooking tabcasts.


Devon aged up to child.



Despite a lack of obviously suitable traits, he liked school a lot more than Kerry had.  Alessandra tutored him to an A and he spent the rest of his childhood (i.e. one day) playing with the blocks and toy oven, and fishing.

Clare retired.  I was getting tired of a map view full of architecture jobs that were never going to be carried out and she had plenty to do at home.  She, too, was cautiously allowed a multitab, so that she could get to level 5 logic and take over the tutoring duties.  (She still managed to sneak off and pick up level 1 fishing while I was watching Kerry.)  She’d also started to learn social networking from playing with her phone.  Although that was never going to be a high priority, it might be a simpler alternative to alchemy for future best friends, and I decided to let her carry on learning the skill in whatever free time she and I had.

Alessandra Giordano, the last of the dynasty helpers, had her appointment with Grim at 29 days.



She didn’t feature much in the screenshots but was vital in smoothing the transition from reliance on helpers to a largely self-sufficient dynasty.  Rest in peace, Alessandra.  I’ll miss you.

Kerry, four days into young adulthood, had reached the point where she had to start thinking seriously about the future of the dynasty.  I sent her up the hill to visit the Monty family, who had become werewolves.  Despite discovering almost immediately that they ought to be fundamentally incompatible (she was good; he was evil), Kerry and Antonio fell heavily for each other.  She pulled a potion out of her backpack and cured him…



…and then invited him to move in.



Once restored to humanity, Antonio was only a day from elder but I gave him a partial makeover anyway.  Kerry lost no time in proposing…



…and bringing in the next generation.




Devon had another birthday.



He became a green thumb and started on his only real task for the dynasty, that of improving the quality of the plants to give the future gardener the best possible start.  Talking of whom…



Kerry gave birth to the first male heir in the bedroom corridor.  This is threatening to become a family tradition.  Welcome, Ross.

In keeping with another tradition, Kerry and Antonio got married as soon as their son was settled in his cot.  Since it was dark by this time, they settled for an indoor wedding…





…with the bride’s mother and brother as vaguely bored spectators.



(And, of course, they immediately suffered a celebrity disgrace for having a child out of wedlock.)

[hazelnut]

Bereavement and Bliss

Birthdays are never far away on this speed.  Devon became a young adult…



…and Kerry aged up to full adulthood.  She was oddly happy about it.



Kerry seems far more excitable than Clare, despite not having the trait officially.  Exhibit B:



I’m pretty sure she also has a hidden absent-minded trait.  Either that or she’s just plain glitchy.  She keeps forgetting what she’s supposed to be doing.  Antonio had both of those traits, so maybe that’s why they got on so well.  It was a blissfully happy marriage (although that was partly because of the bride’s elixirs.  She was racking up the numbers for the making and throwing challenges by mass-producing vials of bliss.  The family and the doorstepping paparazzi were permanently blissed-out).

Their time together was tragically short, though - they were married for about a day and a half.  Like Chan, Antonio only just made it to 27 days and ran out of time while his son was still a baby.







He seemed content to go with Grim.  I suppose he’d had a long life, really, even though I didn’t see much of it.  He had been around since the start of the game, after all.  Grim was probably happy, too – Kerry took the chance to throw a vial at him.

Shortly afterwards, Ross became a toddler.



He inspired Clare's best painting yet (in my view.  The game disagreed.)





Despite her heartbreak, Kerry carried on with her alchemy and surprised me by achieving her lifetime wish the following day (and I missed another significant screenshot).



She’d reached the top of the alchemist career long before this, mostly by consigning elixirs that Carlotta had bought before she was born.  She ought to have completed all three consigning challenges by now but the game was refusing to recognise her impressive reputation.

Ross had another birthday.



Kerry supermaxed alchemy halfway through adulthood and turned her attention to cooking instead.  The timing was perfect – the food made by Gino and Carlotta was finally starting to run out.  She also joined the culinary career in pursuit of best friends and opportunities.

Ross became a teenager…



…and Kerry had her final birthday.  She cashed in the celebrity opportunity she’d been holding as a backup for the past week, had her portrait painted and sat down to her first plate of ambrosia.




Kerry County


                                   Kerry’s portraits: the first two by Jayden, the middle two by Alessandra and the final two by Clare

Traits: good, friendly, supernatural fan, born saleswoman, natural cook

Lifetime wish: Alchemy Artisan
Career: Alchemist
Skill: Alchemy
(She also maxed cooking and completed Menu Maven the day after achieving immortality.)

Building: Graciella's Groceries and Delfina's Diner
Property: Moonlit Stroll Park

Unique lifetime rewards: Born to Cook, Suave Seller, Teleportation Pad

Unique best friends

• Ross County
• Devon County
• Paola Romano
• Orlando Romano
• Ulysses Beckmann
• Karl Bryant

Unique opportunities

• After School Employment
• The Research Project
• From One Chef to Another
• Burgers for Sims in Uniform
• The Dish Showdown
• Broadway Cameo

[PeregrineTook]

Congratulations!  Seems like Kerry was certainly a roller coaster of an heiress for you!  I always panic about the honor roll.  I had an heir once who never got the notice that he'd made honor roll, but both parents had the wish to see him make honor roll and those wishes both got cashed in on his final day of returning from school. 
Glad Kerry managed to get so much done in such a short time.  Kudos!

[KCNDreams]

Oh my goodness, a second immortal! Congratulations!

 

The first generation wasn't actually faster at all in my time.  I'm hoping that will change as I get further through - and that the short lifespan will wipe out the boredom that tends to set in near the end of a normal-speed immortal dynasty.  It was also fun to plan.  I often find that I enjoy planning games as much as playing them; sometimes more.  Working out what careers and supermaxed skills I was reasonably confident of getting through in the time and then combining them was interesting and I'm hoping that the time pressure will mean that the game itself is just as absorbing.  So far, it's working out that way.

I'm surprised the first gen wasn't faster, is it because they're typically a rush in the beginning?

I'm also really big on planning, more than playing at times. I've been planning a dynasty for far longer than I probably should, or testing out certain strategies/founders instead of just starting it. I love reading stories and seeing how they're approached, and I'm still amazed at how much you've managed to accomplish in so little time!